Gateway to the below. Whoa...

[Uncle Xyzzy]

Wow, that's huge. WE had a sinkhole destroy about two or three homes here, but not that huge.

I blame Kefka.

[shapu]

This is what will most likely happen to New Orleans (United States of America). If I remember correctly, a large portion of the city is built on garbage, sediment, and such simply pushed into the ocean and then built on. Not completely sure how much is bulit on what, but it's below sea level, too. So it could Antlantisise.

Yay for making up incredibly awesome words. *pats self on back*

Only part of NO is built on filler- the older sections (mainly the French Quarter) are actually above sea level but still surrounded by water. When the levees broke during Hurricane Katrina, parts of the city were basically islands. You are right, though, in that the city is sinking - a couple of inches a year, IIRC.

The city was founded in the 1710s, and they didn't have gasoline-powered water pumps back then, but it had a good view of the outlet of the Mississippi River into the Gulf of Mexico, so it was a logical place for a port. As the city was leveed, dammed, and pumped dry, people moved into some of the really low-lying neighborhoods.

Interesting New Orleans fact: The water table is so high relative to the city that you can't bury people in the earth - their caskets will float on water that seeps into the grave and push up through the earth. So everyone is buried either in a lead-lined tomb or an above-ground mausoleum.

[NeoPet_online]

Sinkholes have been appearing in Mexico a lot, lately, and not just Mexico, but all of Latin America as well. Creepy.

[ryan.riverside]

Sinkholes have been appearing in Mexico a lot, lately, and not just Mexico, but all of Latin America as well. Creepy.

They're going to happen eventually. It's just coincidence that it's all been happening lately. If you think about it, most of the Latin and Southern American cities were founded in the same time general time frame. The sewer systems most likely all occurred at around the same time, so it would make sense that they are beginning to fall apart around the same time. I wouldn't have expected it to be as large scale, but it's not a big surprise. Like I said before, there will be areas that will Atlanitisise. The thing is that more people will be affected now than when sinkholes appeared in the past, largely because of increasing population density in relatively decreasing land areas. By this I mean that there is massive population growth coupled with geographic clumping into cities. From the pictures of this sinkhole, though, it doesn't look like any houses fell into the hole.